Episode 22 - Hilary Fyles and Adrian Desmier
Conversations with real parents working from home with real kids.
Are you are in that group of people hit really hard by the current pandemic-enforced lockdown - a parent stuck at home with young children, trying to continue their education or keep them occupied while working yourself? If you’re doing that on your own that brings its own stresses of course but if you’re trying to do it with your partner you may be finding some stresses in the couple relationship too. Anxiety and overwhelm have a way of highlighting fault lines. If you’re currently holed up with your partner, you may start to notice things a little bit more. Everything is amplified in close quarters—their quirks and habits, the things they do that are helpful, and the things they do that might drive you a little batty.
My guests today are two parents who are currently working from home with small children. Alain Desmier is an entrepreneur and founder of Contact State, a technology platform focused on data privacy. He's spent the last ten years building internet businesses whilst also working flexibly and remotely so he has some ideas about how to make working from home work, albeit not previously with kids in tow!
Hilary Fyles is one of the office managers at The Parent Practice, so an essential worker! Her background is in the literature sector but she’s not getting much time for reading books right now!
Listen to this episode with Alain and Hilary if you want to learn:
How to use schedules to divide up work and childcare and home schooling, which reflect your individual priorities
How it might help to talk with your partner, and the children, about how life is different now and how you’re going to approach it and work out your priorities together
About talking to children about the fact that adults may be a bit stressed right now and apologising when we lose it but also setting up time for the adults to keep stress-reducing activities as part of the routine and modelling for the kids how we take care of our emotional wellbeing
About the need to talk to children about adult feelings as well as their own
How to separate work and home life even if you’re transitioning between the two throughout the weekday and how keeping the weekend for fun time is more important than ever
About what role non-verbal signals can have in separating out the different parts of life
How mealtimes can be a real focus for family life and preparing meals and eating together more than previously can be a real bonus for this period, with the added improvement to digestion and sleep!
How to involve your children in contributing to the management of the household
How to look for opportunities to be kind to your partner during this time, show interest, find areas of agreement, express affection and appreciation. Descriptive praise will be one way of doing this. Making time for the other’s interests will be another
Ideas for building a united front in this time of stress including having conversations with your partner about shared values.
And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It’s important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some surprising uplifting moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Hilary and Alain share some lovely stories with us, lovely family moments and re-evaluations of what’s important as a family.
Links:
Alain
Email: aldesmier@gmail.com
Twitter: alaindesmier
Hilary